By Wisam Zoghbour, from Gaza
In Gaza, rain is not a fleeting natural phenomenon, but a harsh test of an international system that has failed to protect civilians. The tents that were flooded with the first winter storm were not submerged by rain alone, but by a long chain of misguided political decisions, international complicity, and institutional failure that has reduced humanitarian aid to little more than the management of pain.
For weeks, relevant authorities have announced the entry of dozen hundreds—of tents and tarpaulins into the Gaza Strip, presenting these figures as evidence of a humanitarian response. Yet the reality on the ground exposes a vast gap between rhetoric and truth: tents unfit for winter, camps established without drainage infrastructure, and children sleeping in mud. With every storm, thousands of displaced people are forced to flee yet again, as if displacement has become a permanent condition rather than a temporary exception.
The question here is not technical, but profoundly political: who decides the form and locations of shelter distribution? On what basis? And why are vast areas of Gaza—including the north, Khan Younis, and the central region—left without the most basic level of protection? This ambiguity cannot be explained by a lack of resources alone; it reflects a structural failure in aid management and a genuine absence of accountability.
Israel, as the occupying power, bears the primary legal and moral responsibility for this catastrophe. It has destroyed homes and infrastructure, imposed a suffocating siege, and blocked the entry of adequate shelter materials. When cement is banned, insulation materials are restricted, and emergency supplies are classified as “dual-use,” cold becomes part of the machinery of war, and rain turns into a silent weapon that continues what the bombs began.
However, merely condemning the occupation does not absolve the international community of its responsibility. Influential states, UN institutions, and donors are fully aware that flimsy tents are not a winter solution, and that makeshift camps are a guaranteed recipe for recurring disasters. Yet they continue to fund temporary and ineffective measures, because they are politically cheaper and more aligned with a logic of “crisis containment” rather than serious efforts to end the crisis.
Most dangerous of all is that these failures are wrapped in polished humanitarian rhetoric. Photos are taken, reports are written, and figures are announced, while people in Gaza are left to face the rain with nothing but a blanket and a torn tent. In this way, humanitarian aid shifts from being a moral obligation to a media façade that conceals political impotence.
Gaza is not asking for special privileges, but for basic rights guaranteed by international law: safe shelter, protection for civilians, and the opening of crossings to allow the entry of what is necessary for survival. Unless the logic of “managing suffering” is replaced by one of accountability and genuine protection, every coming winter will stand as yet another witness to the collapse of the international conscience.
In other parts of the world, heavy rainfall is treated as a natural disaster requiring an immediate response and comprehensive protective infrastructure. In Gaza, however, it is treated as a marginal detail in an ongoing war against life itself. Here, the question is no longer about the weather, but about the international system that allows rain to be turned into a silent weapon of death.
Translation: Dauli Baja
Wisam Zoghbour is a journalist, a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists' Union, and Director of Radio Voice of the Fatherland.
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